12. The Cosmology of War
From The Observatory
This book was produced by Human Bridges.
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- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Prologue: What Are the Roots of Civilization?
- Chronology and Maps
- Spring: Establishing Society’s Structural Proportions
- 1. How the Archaic Kosmos Integrated Nature and Society
- 2. The Shift From Lunar to Solar Calendars and Counting
- 3. Measures, Rules, and Prices
- Summer: Balancing Self-Expression With Group Order
- 4. Alphanumeric Notation and the Calendrical-Musical Kosmos
- 5. Music, Temperament, and Social Concord
- 6. The Distributive Justice of Group Feasts and Banquets
- Autumn: The Division of Labor and Economic Justice
- 7. Social Division Into Calendrical Tribes and Ranks
- 8. From the Temple Corporation to the Family Oikos (Household)
- 9. The Archaic Cosmology of Cities: Building the Kosmos on Earth
- Winter: The Archaic Order in Motion and Its Collapse
- 10. Social Justice Sanctified, From Inanna and Nanshe to Nemesis
- 11. Periodicities of Property and Debt
- 12. The Cosmology of War
- Epilogue: Modern Civilization as the Destruction of Archaic Order
- Backmatter
- Acknowledgments
- Bibliography
- Lecture: How Temples and Religion Played a Central Role in Creating the Ancient Economic Order That Has Become Secularized Today
- Help Us Edit and Join This Collaborative Research Project
- Navigate the Query Pages Throughout This Book
- Style Guide for This Book
Editor’s Note
This chapter is a stub that would benefit from Collaborative Research volunteer expansion. Please see this page for notes.
Could you help us expand this chapter to include more information generally, including more of what is teased in the Key Concepts section and what is in the General Queries page for this chapter with the author’s notes and hints on where he was going?
And could you help us form a cohesive narrative/thesis about war and the kosmos in this chapter?
Heraclitus: ‘War Is the Father of All’
Add ContextCan you add in this section’s body text the quotation mentioned in the section header (‘War Is the Father of All’), its context, and an explanation of how it fits into this section?
In antiquity, temples were a constant interface for a range of activities including war and commerce. On the most general plane, war was fought according to rules sponsored by the temples. War booty had long been dedicated to the temples, as was a portion of Mesopotamia’s gains from commerce. Hammurapi’s laws charged the temples to redeem captured war prisoners whose families lacked the ready funds to pay. One of the major benefits of using coinage for Persians, Greeks, and later empires was that it permitted standardized and regular payment to mercenaries. A major innovation in the use of coinage in Persian, Greek, and Roman civilizations was to pay mercenaries. In the end, warfare became an organizing principle that took precedence even over commercial considerations.
Throughout antiquity debt cancellations became a well-known tactic in waging warfare: Attackers and defenders both promised populations a debt-free peace.Citation NeededCan you provide a source we can cite that would strengthen this statement? Debt cancellations were a frequent result of major military campaigns, beginning in Sumer and Babylonia, whose rulers canceled the debts of the peasantry so as to give them their own lands to fight for.Citation NeededCan you provide a source we can cite that would strengthen this statement? And more specificity about the rulers would be welcome too. Victorious rulers often proclaimed Clean Slates for defeated cities in order to win over their populations.
The Roman triumph procession circumambulated the city (much like the city-founding ceremony), led by the victorious general in his chariot. Behind him stood a slave whispering, as the crowds applauded, “Remember, you are only a mortal.” The procession passed through a triumphal arch built to resemble the sky, being a curved celestial model.Citation NeededHelp us add a citation for this fact, ideally including source link(s) if possible.
The prototype of this triumphal ritual has been traced back to the Mesopotamian New Year festivals that formed a model for nearly every ancient rite—thus closing a long circle from periodic proclamations of justice to military conquest. But ultimately, in the hands of Rome, warfare was responsible for indebting rural populations, leading to their forfeiture of lands and even their personal freedom. In effect, Mars conquered Zeus, and the age of iron superseded that of gold.Add ContextCan you help us expand on the relationship between the metals and the gods and this conquering more generally mythologically?
As Humphreys[1] (1978: p. 121) observed: “Archaeologists have long been interested in destruction by war as evidence for chronology, but it has not been studied from the point of view of economic and social history.” How did warfare change the organization of society, not merely disrupt it with a later return to normal?
For instance (p. 71), “When the Peloponnesian War forced the peasants of Attica to take refuge inside the city, the market grew rapidly in importance, and with it came the extension of the ‘market mentality.’”[2]
Benveniste[3] (1973: p. 299), in discussing the evolution of words for cities and communities, observed that “The relation between peace and war was once exactly the reverse of what it is today. For us peace is the normal condition, which is interrupted by a state of war; for the ancients, the normal state was war, to which peace puts an end. We have little understanding of anything about the notion of peace and of the vocabulary which designates it in ancient society, if we do not grasp that peace intervenes as a sometimes accidental and often temporary solution to a quasi-permanent state of hostility between towns and states.”
Yet this does not seem to have been the case in the neolithic Near East. Not until around 2750 BC were Mesopotamian cities fortified. Until then, mutual standoffs were negotiated through amphictyonic leagues and their center-towns.
One of the earliest variations on the idea of kosmos was military in character. In the Odyssey[4] (13.77) rowers sat kosme, “in order,” and there was also a military tinge in “arraying troops.” However, Puhvel[5] noted (1976: p. 154), “the military usage is a technicalization of a commonplace word, rather than the non-martial attestations being founded on military metaphor.”
On the other hand, it also is true, as Hocart[6] (1970: p. 161) pointed out, that “The character of warrior is entirely at variance with that of a maintainer of law and order. How came these opposite qualities to be united in the same person?” And how did secular kingship swallow up the priestly functions of rulers?
If the sun ritual proclaimed “right” and restored order, there was after all a fight against evil. And evil meant outsiders, hostile people.
As Hocart[7] wrote (p. 156): “The king is not only the sun; he is commonly associated with the thunderbolt and the eagle. … But the character of the thunder-god is very different from that of the sun-god. He is sudden, irregular, violent, cataclysmic; he smites and consumes.” In Vedic times the king’s warlike character was associated with his impersonation of Indra, while his law-giving powers were associated with Varuna.[8]
StubMore sections and information are needed to fulfill Chapter 12’s promise.
Key Concepts
This glossary of key concepts will help readers who are new to the subject of archaic human history.
Keywords: Triumph and class.
Key image: Coinage, struck to pay mercenaries out of war booty.
Lunar symbol: The sacred gold statues of Greek Nike (“Winged Victory”) melted down by Athens to pay mercenaries during the Peloponnesian War, and Juno Moneta who issued Rome’s first gold coinage toward the end of the Punic Wars.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThese topics are not discussed in the body of this chapter. Can you help us add them there?
Solar symbols: The horse, formerly a solar-calendrical symbol by virtue of its 36 ribs, reappears as the weapon of the aristocratic cavalry class.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThis topic is not discussed in the body of this chapter. Can you help us add it there?
Principles of regularity: The rituals of warfare included tithes of booty dedicated to the Greek city-temples. The tactics of warfare included massed troop formations going back to the third millennium BC, and military music, e.g., the rhythmic paean of marching soldiers.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyCan you add a mention of “paean” and military music to the Chapter 12 body (that is teased here in the Key Concepts section)? See also the economic classification of the population according to military ratings, and the allotments of land to returning war veterans in classical times.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThese topics are not discussed in the body of this chapter. Can you help us add them there?
Periodic renewal ceremony: Commanders who attacked cities might have reenacted their foundation ceremonies in reverse, as did Joshua at Jericho. Rulers often proclaimed debt cancellations to win over local populations.
Integration with other dimensions of the archaic kosmos: The division of society into classes based on military ranking.Key Concept Missing in Chapter BodyThis topic is not discussed in the body of this chapter. Can you help us add it there?
International interface: Dedication of spoils at amphictyonies, and sale of prisoners into slavery abroad.
Public character: Military functions usually were under the control of the palace of war-chief. Rome’s military assembly seems to have evolved into the public assembly, much like the Greek damosTranslation CheckCan someone with knowledge of ancient Greek check the spelling? It seems likely to have been meant to be demos, but we deferred to the author.. Victorious generals perambulated the city and delivered their stipulated donation of war booty to the temple, following much the same procedure as city-founders.
Religious sanctification: Declaring war involved sacred rituals. Generals were blessed in war, and in turn donated booty to city temples, which were supposed to be spared from being sacked. The laws of Hammurapi charged Mesopotamian temples with ransoming Babylonian war prisoners, while employing captured foreigners.
Ultimate dissolution: Warfare disenfranchised Rome’s peasant-infantry by indebting it, with no postwar proclamation of freedom from debt or allotment of new land to returning veterans.
Bibliography
Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists: Or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus, C.D. Yonge (tr.), Vol. 3 (London: 1854), via Andrew Smith’s Attalus.
Émile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society (Coral Gables, Florida: 1973).
Larissa Bonfante Warren, “Roman Triumphs and Etruscan Kings: The Changing Face of the Triumph,” Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 60 (1970), pp. 49–66.
Muhammed A. Dandamaev, A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire (Leiden: 1989).
Muhammad A. Dandamaev and Vladimir G. Lukonin, The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran, Philip L. Kohl (tr.) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1989).
Herodotus, The Histories, A.D. Godley (tr.) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1920), via Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library Project.
Arthur M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors (Chicago: 1970 [1936]).
Homer, The Odyssey, A.T. Murray (tr.) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1919), via Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library Project.
Sally Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London, 1978).
Plato, Laws. From Plato in Twelve Volumes, R.G. Bury (tr.), Vols. 10 and 11 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1967 and 1968), via Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library Project.
W. Kendrick Pritchett, The Greek State at War, Part I (Berkeley and Los Angeles: 1971).
Jaan Puhvel, “The Origins of Greek Kosmos and Latin Mundus,” American Journal of Philology, Vol. 97 (1976), pp. 154–167.Verify CitationThe spelling of the author’s first name seems correct here based on the source link here, but let us know if the source link is incorrect.
Anthony Snodgrass, Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment (London: 1980).
H.S. Versnel, Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Leiden: 1970).
- ↑ Sally Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London, 1978), p. 121.
- ↑ Sally Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London, 1978), p. 71.
- ↑ Émile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society (Coral Gables, Florida: 1973), p. 299.
- ↑ Homer, The Odyssey, A.T. Murray (tr.) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1919), via Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library Project, Book 13, line 77.
- ↑ Jaan Puhvel, “The Origins of Greek Kosmos and Latin Mundus,” American Journal of Philology, Vol. 97 (1976), p. 154.Verify CitationThe spelling of the author’s first name seems correct here based on the source link here, but let us know if the source link is incorrect.
- ↑ Arthur M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors (Chicago: 1970 [1936]), p. 161.
- ↑ Arthur M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors (Chicago: 1970 [1936]), p. 156.
- ↑ Arthur M. Hocart, Kings and Councillors (Chicago: 1970 [1936]), p. 157.
